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Accessing certain glyphs (e.g. Zapfino Ornaments)

This isn't so much a question as an answer I found after pulling my hair out, knowing that this *used* to be simple in Mac OS X (bring back KeyCaps!), but the solution has eluded me until now. Hopefully, this explanation will help someone else ...


Scrolling through Zapfino's repertoire in Font Book, I found a glyph I wanted to use:

I tried the Copy button, then pasting into various apps, every time it inserted a bullet, even if my font were set to Zapfino where I pasted. I read in another thread that Zapfino Glyphs was a separate font that wasn't free, but it didn't seem right that Font Book would show me a character I cannot use.


I got a clue in another thread, there is a Typography subpanel in the Fonts panel. Then I just started pressing every key on the keyboard. Then I hit caps lock and repeated the process.


I discovered that glyph is Capital E on the keyboard with Ornaments checked in the Typography subpanel. I also noticed this trick doesn't work in every app (e.g., it works in TextEdit and Scrivener, but not Mail).


I hope that helps.


This is an atrocious user experience. Apple, please fix.

Posted on May 20, 2023 7:09 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on May 20, 2023 7:26 AM

These are user supported public communities and pleas for Apple to "please fix" are wasted as the Apple product teams do not participate here. If you want them to hear you, then send feedback directly to the product team in question and in this instance, that would be the macOS product team.

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5 replies

May 20, 2023 7:58 AM in response to DanPouliot

DanPouliot wrote:

This is an atrocious user experience. Apple, please fix.

I don't think there is really any alternative way to deal with glyph variants like that under the Unicode system which all computers now use. Fonts that actually map such things directly to already defined characters (which is what the old Key Caps depended on) are pretty much banished.


Are these ornaments being accurately displayed on other systems where your documents are being read?


In case it's of interest, here is something about making them appear in html/css:


https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/font-variant-alternates





May 20, 2023 8:04 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

Tom Gewecke wrote:
Are these ornaments being accurately displayed on other systems where your documents are being read?

There are no other systems where my documents are being read. I required access to those glyphs in order to use them in a graphic.


I don't think there is really any alternative way to deal with glyph variants like that under the Unicode system which all computers now use

The beauty of software is someone can create a solution to any computing problem, e.g. KeyCaps.

Accessing certain glyphs (e.g. Zapfino Ornaments)

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